by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – We’re all trying to unravel what the hell is going on in the Middle East right now. As near as I can tell, there’s just a handful of tweets on Elon Musk’s child porn app reporting something about a cease-fire and either a 10-point or 15-point settlement of the war. It’s unclear as to whether Iranian officials have agreed to either of the deals, and the prime minister of Pakistan is in the mix, too, but it’s possible he’s being puppeteered by the White House.
To be clear, there is effectively no cease-fire. During the first day of this non-cease-fire cease-fire, Israel killed a record 182 people in its war against Iran-proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon, and rockets were still being fired into Iran.
In other words, the cease-fire doesn’t exist.
Donald’s hackishly obvious TV cliffhanger strategy continues to destabilize the world, keeping us all off balance – the nauseating contact high of observing a doddering, incompetent sociopath pawing his way through each day without any concern for the second order effects of his actions. He only thinks in terms of immediate lizard brain reactions to whatever the most immediate crisis happens to be. And most of the time, the latest crisis is due to the explosive recoil from his previous decision or blurt.
Here’s an example.
Several weeks into the war, Donald said:
“Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the Nato Countries’ assistance _ WE NEVER DID!”
A few moments later…
“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!! President DJT”
Do we need NATO? Do we not need NATO? It doesn’t matter because, to him, it’s all about the chaos and uncertainty. The Madman Theory of foreign policy. Incidentally, notice how he doesn’t similarly badger his dictator besties Kim Jong-un, Javier Milei, Victor Orban, and Vladimir Putin. Indeed, the latter pair of despots happen to be aligned with Iran.
By now it should be obvious: the status of the war is whatever Donald Trump decides to blurt. There’s no plan. More importantly, there’s no victory. If everything ended right now, if everyone stood up from the table and walked away, the result of the war would be a crushing loss for the United States.
Even the best case scenario would plunk us back to where we were in 2018 when Donald withdrew the United States from the Iran Deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But today, there are scores of dead Iranian civilians, including thousands of children. At least 13 American military personnel have been killed, and it’s possible there were many more we don’t know about. Hundreds of soldiers have suffered life changing traumatic brain injuries. American consumers have been forced to pay more for commodities like gasoline, eating into their paychecks. And for what? To get us back to where we were eight years ago? Yes. Sadly yes.
Donald posted the following deal terms Thursday morning:
It was agreed, a long time ago, and despite all of the fake rhetoric to the contrary - NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS and, the Strait of Hormuz WILL BE OPEN & SAFE.
In 2018, when Donald tore up the Iran Deal, Iran wasn’t developing nuclear weapons. Its uranium enrichment was limited by the deal to less than four percent, far from weapons grade enrichment, which is around 90 percent. Then Donald ended the deal and Iran’s enrichment jumped to 60 percent, but still not refined enough for a nuke. Iran was also relinquishing thousands of pounds of enriched uranium and dismantling its centrifuges. All of that ended when Donald withdrew from the JCPOA.
It’s also likely that Iran never intended to build a nuke, given how there was a fatwa against it, issued 20 years ago by the Ayatollah, who was killed early in Donald’s herky-jerky war. And even if the fatwa was bullshit and Iran was close to having a nuke last Summer, which is a dubious claim made by a serial con-man liar, Donald said he obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability. Point being, there weren’t any nukes eight years ago, and no one was killed to get there.
Likewise, the Strait of Hormuz was open, safe, and considered international waters as of February! Literally the only reason it was closed is because Donald attacked Iran.
All told, Donald is demanding two deal terms that were already in place before he fucked everything up. The “art of the deal” is such horseshit. Based on this alone, Donald Trump is literally the worst deal-maker in American history, killing thousands of people only to land in the same place we were before, and that’s if everything turns out perfectly, which is a serious stretch.
It’s highly likely that when this thing ends, Iran will still control the Strait, it will continue to enrich uranium, inspectors won’t be allowed into the country like they were during the JCPOA, and none of the people Donald has killed, including a school full of 7-year-old girls will be resurrected from the grave even though Donald is apparently like Jesus.
Donald Trump and his coterie of henchmen fucked up. Big time. Don’t believe anyone who tries to sell this catastrophe as a victory – unless you define victory as wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on military hardware, wasting thousands of lives, frittering away our international alliances, and upending global stability only to achieve something that was already achieved years ago.
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Trump & Hegseth are trying to CON-vince us that the measure of a war's success, victory, winning, is just all about how much shit you've gotten to blow up. But massive destruction is the sordid means to an end not the end in itself, unlike these two morons with the mentality of a psychopathic toddler who only see how much BOOM! BANG! WHOOPEE! they produce as the only positive result we should see, credit, and thank them for, a great show of a snuff video, as if we all are as perverse like them